


Find Your Way in the Dark

by kaijuburgers



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Complicated Relationships, Dysfunctional Family, Forgiveness, Gen, Past Relationship(s), The Calling (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:43:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27586276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaijuburgers/pseuds/kaijuburgers
Summary: “I’ve been hearing the Calling,” Sereda says eventually, looking down into her wine cup. And despite everything that has happened between them, something in Bhelen’s chest catches.-A fic in which the Warden Aeducan visits Orzammar one last time.
Relationships: Bhelen Aeducan & Female Aeducan, Female Aeducan/Gorim Saelac
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13
Collections: A Paragon of Their Kind Dragon Age Dwarf Exchange





	Find Your Way in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jarakrisafis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jarakrisafis/gifts).



Bhelen hears that Sereda is coming long before she presents herself, and even with the time to think he cannot understand why she is here. Two decades have passed since the Fifth Blight, and the last time Sereda spoke to him she made it quite clear there was nothing in Orzammar that she wanted any longer. There had been so much anger and disgust in her eyes-- hot and burning like rivers of molten metal-- that sometimes Bhelen wonders why she still chose to give the crown to him. The answer he gives himself changes. Sometimes it is that she recognised he was more efficient than Harrowmont, sometimes it is that she cares for their family legacy too much to give it up, and sometimes it is that-- despite everything--she still saw her beloved little brother in him. 

Sereda never came back to Orzammar for Gorim, despite what there had once been between the two of them. She never came back to Orzammar to see her statue in the Hall of Heroes. She never even came back to Orzammar to pay respects to their father. And yet she is here, standing in his throne room, even if it takes him a moment to recognise her.

“ _Atrast vala_ sister,” he says as she walks across the room to him, and something in his throat catches. It is her. She really is standing here. Her hair may be lighter than it once was-- sun bleached from a light Aeducan brown to a dark, dirty blonde-- and her face may be covered in a good half a dozen more scars than he remembers her having, but it is her.

It’s only after he speaks that he realises something is wrong. There’s no anger in her eyes, nothing in the way she looks at him that instantly tells him she will hold him in contempt as long as she lives. Instead, she looks cold, like she isn’t entirely here inside her body. She keeps moving towards him until she is only a few steps away, and the guards to the side of Bhelen’s throne twitch around their spears, but he knows there is no need. She smiles, but it’s a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.

“King Bhelen,” she says, and in another time, Bhelen would take stock of the fact this is the first time she has ever called him by his title. “Can we speak? In private.” 

It could be a trap. Everything in Orzammar could be a trap. Bhelen took the throne through the same means his father had once done before him, after all. But there’s something in the way she holds herself, a kind of heavy honesty that he can’t help but believe. 

“Of course,” he says.

It takes a while to usher the tittering nobles out of the throne room, and for him to call for two cups and a jug of wine to be brought to them. Sereda sits down in one of the wooden chairs and ignores any attempt by the nobles to capture a conversation on their way out. Instead she looks forward, but not as though she is looking at anything. Instead she looks forward like she is seeing through everything, not just through the chair opposite her or the walls of the room, but the very rock Orzammar is carved into. 

It’s odd to sit opposite to her, down at one of the banquet tables instead of in his throne. But then again, it’s odd that Sereda has returned at all. When Bhelen settles down in the seat she seems to remember where she is, she starts to look _at_ him rather than _through_ him.

“It’s excellent wine,” Bhelen says, lifting his cup. “Orlesian, imported from the surface.”

Sereda gives an amused snort, but says nothing else as she lifts the cup, holding it between her hands. “Are we dedicating this to anyone?” 

“If you wish.”

“In that case,” she says, lifting the cup just a little higher. “To old friends, to old enemies, and to everyone in between.”

And then she drinks. Something is very wrong, and when her cup returns to the table, Bhelen finds it in him to press for the reason.

“Sister,” he says. “Why are you here?”

There’s a long silence. His sister takes another sip of wine.

“I’ve been hearing the Calling,” Sereda says eventually, looking down into her wine cup. And despite everything that has happened between them, something in Bhelen’s chest catches. 

“I thought you’d have more time.” 

“So did I,” Sereda says, and Bhelen can tell how heavy the words feel in her mouth. “But I don’t get to decide that. I always knew becoming a Warden postponed my death rather than stopped it.”

The reason her death is coming remains unspoken between them, and Bhelen is grateful for that--almost as much as he hates it. If asked, when he was younger, he would have said he regretted nothing, that Sereda would have done exactly the same to him if given the opportunity. But now, with more grey hairs in his beard than he cares to admit , he’s not so sure any more. He takes his cup of wine from the table and gulps it down, trying to forget the fact that his sister is here and that his sister is dying, and it's all because of the scared, angry child he used to be.

Neither of them speak for a while, and the silence is worse than any words could be. It’s Bhelen who breaks the silence.

“So that’s it,” his voice shakes more than it has any right to be, and he hates it. “That’s why you’ve come back to Orzammar. To die.”

There’s another moment of silence, as if Sereda is gathering up the words before she says them. When she speaks, her voice is a hoarse whisper.

“Yes,” she says. “That’s why I’ve come back. To die. To say goodbye, to fight as long as I can, and then to go to the Deep Roads to die.”

* * *

Bhelen doesn’t mean to intrude  \--  he truly doesn’t. When he offered Sereda a suite in the Royal Palace to stay in, he never expected her to use it to receive guests. There are people in Orzammar she wants to say goodbye to, of course, but even though Bhelen has some expectation around who those people are, he doesn’t expect to see any of them leaving. And least of all the people he expects to see while turning a corner in his palace is Gorim Saelac. 

Gorim and Bhelen have kept their distance ever since Gorim returned to Orzammar. They’ve seen each other, of course. They’ve attended the same events, seen each other in the Assembly, tried to persuade the other’s vote from a distance. They’ve been present in each others’ lives enough that Bhelen has seen Gorim age alongside him. Neither of them are old men -- at least not yet -- but they’re close enough to old that there’s a similar number of grey stripes in their beards. And, more importantly, they’ve been present in each others’ lives enough that Bhelen recognises Gorim when they pass in the Palace corridor. The warrior is looking down at his feet, a blank hollow expression on his face, and Bhelen knows immediately that Gorim has come from Sereda’s guest room.

“Gorim has his own House now,” he says as he swings the door open. Sereda is sitting at the vanity chair and she turns to look at him as he enters. “You could have had him receive you as a guest there, instead of asking him here.” 

Sereda plays with the stitching on her dress. It’s odd seeing her like this, out of armor, in soft green fabric instead of the blue of Warden armor. She looks smaller, more fragile, as far from the statue of her that stands towering and gleaming in the Hall of Heroes as she could be. 

“No,” she says. “I couldn’t. His wife has already lived with me haunting that place for twenty years. It would be too cruel to her for me to actually step foot inside it.” 

They stay like that for a while, Sereda sitting in her chair and Bhelen standing in the doorway. He isn’t wearing his crown, and his head feels light, like it always does when he takes it off. He wonders if his sister feels the same way now she’s not wearing her Warden armor, if she’s become so accustomed to feeling the weight of it on her that she doesn’t know what’s holding her down to the earth without it.

“You told him.” 

It’s not a question, but Sereda answers it anyway. “I told him. He hates me.”

She looks so much like their father in that moment. Not the father than Orzammar remembers -- the great warrior-king -- but the one that Bhelen remembers from the very end, the sick, hollow man who lay in a palace bed and waited to die. And in that moment, Bhelen doesn’t know what to say or do. Sereda is right, Gorim probably does hate her right now. He probably hates her for all the years she’s spent away from Orzammar, for all the years she’s never allowed him to see her. And above all, he probably hates that it was now she chose to come back -- when she’s delivering the gravest news possible.

The moment passes and something flashes over Sereda’s eyes. 

“Bhelen,” she says, standing up from the bed. “Can I see my old room?”

The room has been used in the twenty years since it was Sereda’s room, but not much. During his first year as King, Bhelen had ordered its conversion into a bedroom for esteemed guests. But the Royal Palace had been built to last, the bed carved directly into the rock Orzammar was built from. Even when the furnishings and fabrics had been changed out, it still looked like Sereda’s room. He’d always hated coming in here. He hates it even now, with Sereda by his side. 

“You changed the fabrics,” Sereda says, glancing around the room. She doesn’t seem sad. If anything, she seems empty, like all her emotion has already overflowed and poured out of her. “I loved them green and you’ve changed them to blue.”

Bhelen wonders if she thinks it was deliberate. It was, but enough time has passed that maybe it isn’t so obvious that it was. Maybe he can pass it off as just changing with the times. Maybe Sereda is too sharp and observant for that. Maybe it’s too late for any of it to matter. He doesn’t know any more.

When Sereda goes to sit on the bed, he moves to sit beside her. He loved this as a child, sitting beside her on the bed in this room. She used to read to him back then -- dry histories of military warfare that she somehow made interesting. He wondered if that had been why it had been so easy, why she had never seen him as anything but her little baby brother. 

“Do you think you could ever forgive me?” he says. “For what I did.”

Sereda’s spine stiffens for a moment and Bhelen wonders if he’s made a terrible mistake by asking her. But then she relaxes, takes a moment, and speaks.

“I think I did forgive you,” she admits. “Not in that I don’t think you did wrong or that what you did was acceptable. But I forgave you in that I released you from my thoughts and my life. That I became ready to live my life without you.”

It’s an answer. It’s likely the best answer Bhelen will ever get. But there’s a part of him that still wants more.

“If you were’t hearing the Calling,” Bhelen finds himself asking, even though he doesn’t know the answer he would want. “Would you have come back to Orzammar?”

Sereda smiles. 

“No,” she says after a moment. “I don’t think I would have.”

He reaches to place his hand over hers and squeezes softly, trying not to think about what could have been in a different life.


End file.
